MIND CONTROL
CHAPTER FIVE
It was quiet, much too quiet. Starsky groaned and tried to force open his heavy eyeslids. The pounding in his skull felt like someone was on the inside of his head, trying to knock his way out with a sledgehammer. He panicked when he tried to move his hands but couldn't. Finally, his eyes snapped open and he looked around wildly. Plain unadorned white walls. A single doorway and no windows. Where the fuck am I?
As full awareness slowly returned, Starsky realized that the reason he couldn't move was because his hands and ankles were strapped down. He pulled at the leather restraints with a frustrated growl. The only thing he managed to do was rub the skin underneath the straps raw.
'WHERE AM I? LET ME GO!" Starsky yelled, his voice sounding unnaturally loud in the empty room. ''I KNOW YOU'RE OUT THERE! COME IN HERE AND FACE ME LIKE A MAN!"
Nothing. There was no response to his screams. Starsky sighed and took stock of his injuries. Other than a monstrous headache, he didn't seem to hurt anywhere else. He vaguely remembered the men coming to the cottage, one of them being John Colby. It was apparent that they didn't intend to take no for an answer. The brunet noticed that he was lying on a hospital bed with the side rails pulled up and locked in place. He was dressed in an open backed gown with nothing on underneath. There was a chill in the air that made him shiver involuntarily.
Starsky continued yelling, demanding to be released, but his cries went unnoticed or ignored. He yelled until his voice was little more than a hoarse whisper, his throat sore and irritated from his screams. The eerie silence wore on his ragged nerves. His heart pounded painfully in his chest as he contemplated what they had in mind for him. The fear of the unknown sent a chill of uncertainty down his spine.
Starsky continued to pull at the restraints even though he had little hope of freeing himself. It simply wasn't in his nature to give up without a fight. His stomach growled with hunger and he wondered how long he'd been unconscious. He glanced across the room as the door silently opened and a young woman stepped into the room.
She was a cute little redhead with an unblemished complexion and a smattering of freckles across her nose. She appeared to be in her early to mid-twenties with a petite figure. She was dressed in a white uniform and Starsky assumed that she must be a nurse. She was pushing a small cart with a towel covering whatever lay on top.
"Hey, am I glad to see you." Starsky said with a crooked smile. "Can you get me out of these things?" He pulled at the restraints on his wrists to emphasize his question. The young woman didn't say a word as she walked over to the bed and calmly started taking Starsky's vital signs. "My name's Dave. Dave Starsky. What's yours?" Starsky asked, hoping she would answer. Her silence was unnerving and frustrating. The woman still didn't say a word to the captive brunet.
She pulled the towel off the cart and Starsky saw various medical paraphernalia including plastic tubing and a full IV bag. "Hey, what are you doing that for?" Starsky demanded as the young woman used an alcohol swab to wipe the back of his right hand.
Deftly, she inserted a needle into the back of his hand and hooked it to the tubing that led to the IV bag. She reached up and hung the bag on a pole sitting beside the bed, making a few minor adjustments to the flow. Satisfied, she securely taped the needle to the back of Starsky's hand.
When she picked up the second piece of tubing on the cart, Starsky's eyes widened in alarm. He recognized it as a Foley catheter. He'd been in the hospital enough to know that catheterization was both uncomfortable and painful. And at the moment, totally unnecessary. "Hey, you don't have to do that!" Starsky objected "There ain't nothing wrong with me! I can get up and go to the bathroom, all you have to do is unfasten these damned straps." The woman ignored his complaints as she flipped back his hospital gown to expose his groin area.
"Come on, please don't do this…" Starsky said, hating the pleading tone in his voice as the woman continued with her task silently and efficiently. Since Starsky was lying on his back with his legs and hands restrained, his awkward position made it more painful than it needed be as she carefully began to insert the tube into the head of his penis. Starsky bit back a groan and tried to relax as she threaded the tube towards his bladder. Sweat beaded his forehead as his muscles cramped with the intrusion into his body "Please…stop…you're hurting me." Starsky whined, hoping the whimper in his voice would make her stop. But the nurse seemed determined to carry out her task. She ignored him as she continued with the procedure. Finally, the tube was in place. She used a needle to fill the ball inside Starsky's body with water so the tube wouldn't slip out, then she taped a piece of the tubing to the top of his thigh so that it ran over the side of the bed where she hooked the tube to a bag hanging on the side of the bed. She opened the clamp on the tubing and was rewarded with a few drops of golden urine. Starsky took several deep cleansing breathes to ease the painful cramps in his abdomen.
"Why are you doing this?" Starsky demanded "Where am I?"
Still without speaking, the woman knelt beside the bed and opened the nightstand, pulling out a metal bedpan. Placing one hand on Starsky's left hip, she expertly rolled him onto his side and slid the bedpan underneath him. Rolling him back onto his back so that he was positioned over the bedpan, she walked to the foot of the bed and used the handle to raise the head of the bed slightly. Then she quietly left the room, leaving Starsky alone once more.
Starsky choked back a frustrated outburst. Obviously, his captors had no intention of releasing him anytime soon, not even to go to the bathroom. Hutch! Where are you? I could use help right about now, buddy. He had no doubt that the big blond was tearing up the streets looking for him. However, if the military was involved in this whole mess, Starsky knew that there may not be any clues for Hutch to follow in order to solve his abduction. That was one thing he remembered quite clearly about his days in the military. They were experts at covering their tracks.
Starsky closed his eyes, trying not to think about the tightening his chest from overexerting himself. Without his pain meds, he knew that the tightening would soon turn into painful muscle spasms that would take his breath away with their intensity. Restrained the way he was, he wouldn't even be able to change positions to ease the worst of the pain. His throat was dry, his mouth parched. He wished he had thought to ask the nurse for drink of water before she left. She would have to return eventually to take him off the bedpan, he could ask her then. Two hours later, he was still waiting. With no windows in the room, he had no sense of time and with nothing to distract him from his thoughts, his anxiety level was rising rapidly.
Finally the nurse came back into the room. Starsky let out a deep sigh of relief. His lower back ached from being in one position for so long, along with other parts of his anatomy from sitting on the hard metal bedpan for an extended period of time. The redhead still didn't speak to him as she lowered the head of the bed and removed the bedpan. She replaced the empty bedpan in the nightstand beside the bed and pulled a light blanket up to Starsky's waist. Then she was gone again.
Lying there on that hospital bed with no idea of how long he had even been there, his hands and ankles restrained so he couldn't move, and hooked up to various paraphernalia to care for his most basic needs, Starsky couldn't feel anything but sorry for himself. The position he found himself evoked painful memories of his long hospital stay after the shooting. He was uncomfortable, he was bored, he was frustrated and he was afraid. Unaccustomed to sleeping on his back and with the bright overhead light shining in his face, he couldn't get any rest. Unable to sleep and isolated from any human contact except with the nurse who went about her tasks without speaking to him, he began drifting in and out of a semi-conscious stupor.